My Interview With Maurice Sendak In His Connecticut Home

Here is an interview I did with the fascinating artist at his Ridgefield home in 2006 in advance of the children's opera in which he collaborated, "Brundibar.":

Advertisement

By FRANK RIZZO

Like many fables, the story of "Brundibar'' features innocent children, a wicked adversary, helpful animals, a moral to be learned and a happy ending.But underneath the plot of the allegorical children's opera is a darker, sadder story: a real-life tale of children and evil and the Holocaust.

MauriceSendak became familiar with the one-act opera, written in the late '30s, when a friend sent him a Czech recording of the music. The famed children's author and illustrator was moved not simply by Hans Krasa's score but also by the history surrounding the opera. This parallel story, he felt, could have been his own.

Sendak, 77, undertook a later-in life-mission to tell both the story and back story of ``Brundibar,'' one that would involve a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, a picture book based on the original libretto and one of the largest productions undertaken by several major theaters, including the Yale Repertory Theatre.

``Brundibar,'' along with another one-act opera of the period, ``Comedy on the Bridge,'' is now in previews and opens Thursday at the University Theatre in New Haven before traveling on to New York. Arriving at Sendak's neat and sunny studio in the woods in Ridgefield, one is surrounded by a career's worth of wonder.

There are tchotchkes based on his beloved ``Where the Wild Things Are''; posters from his work as a designer of operas such as Mozart's ``The Magic Flute''; memorabilia of Mickey Mouse, the cartoon character that helped him get through a rough Brooklyn childhood: ``I like the [early version of] Mickey. He was a tough little bastard.'' Sendak is a resilient force, speaking frankly of his career, family and ``Brundibar.''

He says he was greatly influenced by his father, who told the sickly child stories when he was bedridden. They weren't pretty stories -- they were real-life and vividly imagined tales from his father's life as a boy living in a little Jewish shtetl in Poland. ``What I liked about his stories ... they were real and true, and he could tell us them without cleaning them up.'' Sendak took that respect and honesty toward the young and created a career that made him one of the premiere figures of children's literature, writing ``In the Night Kitchen,'' ``Outside Over There'' and ``Higglety Pigglety Pop! Or There Must Be More to Life.'' The story of ``Brundibar'' touched him in profound ways. Haunted by the Holocaust, he identifies with the children who were killed, seeing that he could have had the same fate if his parents had not immigrated to America before World War I. ``I always felt it was a total miracle that I had been born here.'' All of his father's relatives were killed in the Holocaust, Sendak says, and many cousins his own age did not survive. He is selective about the projects he undertakes. ``For me to do a book [at this point of my life] it has to hit me in my deepest place,'' says Sendak. ``But when `Brundibar' came into my life it seemed to me to be the epitome of all of my books which deal with the heroic nature of children and how they survive life. When I got this recording from my friend and learned of its history, I felt the whole thing was me. This was my story. ``Most of my important books are threaded with the Holocaust. I try not to make it obvious and bang the drum, but it's there. My whole life was the Holocaust, unfortunately. And `Brundibar' seems to be maybe the place where I can stop and bring peace to myself and the subject. It's the perfect subject: of children who lived through the worst things, who were tough, who sang and then were sent to Auschwitz to die.''

Hans Krasa, a 40-year-old Jewish Czech composer, wrote ``Brundibar'' for a children's opera competition in 1938. With a libretto by playwright Adolf Hoffmesier, it centers on two fatherless children who go to the village square to buy milk for their ailing mother. But they have no money. In the village they see the imposing character of Brundibar, a popular but fierce-looking teenage street singer whose cup is filled with coins. They, too, attempt to sing to earn their milk money, but their tune is drowned out by the bully, who seeks to protect his lucrative turf. Penniless and without shelter, the two children retreat into a dark alley, where they spend the night. It is only when the awakened siblings, rescued by a dog, cat and sparrow who suggest a plan, are joined by other youngsters in the village that their fortunes turn around. A heartbreaking lullaby sung by a great chorus of children wins over the townspeople, who now have no use for Brundibar's insidious song and banish him from town. With money to buy milk, the brother and sister return home and reunite with their loving mother, who recovers. Whether Krasa won the competition, whether he was excluded from it, or even if the contest was even completed are unknown, because by March 1939 Germany invaded and occupied Czechoslovakia, destroying the lives of Jews there. ``Brundibar'' was not performed until 1942 at a concert hall at an orphanage for Jewish boys in the Prague ghetto. Before that first performance, the composer, as well as the opera's conductor, Rafael Schaechter, were arrested and sent in the first transport of Jews to Terezin -- the Nazi's ``model ghetto'' to international eyes -- in central Bohemia, In actuality, Terezin was a way station for the death camps of Auschwitz, Birkenau and Treblinka. At the orphanage, ``Brundibar'' was conducted by the teenage Rudolph Freudenfeld, son of the orphanage's director. After three performances, both Freudenfelds, as well as the show's director/designer, pianist and the orphan boys, were shipped to Terezin along with thousands of other Jews. The younger Freudenfeld had hidden a copy of the piano score in his luggage and when he arrived at Terezin, he found that Krasa was the inmate in charge of music for the camp. Recognizing the public-relations potential in 1943, ``Brundibar'' was staged at the camp, cast with imprisoned boys and girls, who were spruced up for the occasion. The show was performed for the lone International Red Cross inspector, who was easily impressed by Nazi hospitality and cultural opportunities for the camp's inhabitants. Parts of the show, which was performed 55 times, were filmed and used in the Nazi propaganda film, ``The Fuhrer Gives the Jews a City.'' (The film was directed by Kurt Gerron, a German Jew who before his imprisonment was an actor and singer and star of ``The Threepenny Opera,'' where he introduced the Brecht-Weill song ``Mack the Knife''). Most of those associated with the Krasa opera, including the composer, director, Gerron and nearly all of the children, were eventually sent to Auschwitz, where they were killed. Krasa died in the gas chambers in October 1944.

Finding the existing English translations awkward, Sendak asked Tony Kushner (the Pulitzer- and Tony-winning playwright of ``Angels in America'') to create the text for the 2003 illustrated children's book based on the ``Brundibar'' libretto. There was a full stage production of the opera in Chicago, with sets and costumes designed by Sendak, with a score performed in English with professional opera singers in many of the roles. However, it was felt that the show needed more work. For this new production, stage actors were employed and Tony Taccone -- artistic director at Berkeley (Calif.) Repertory Theatre and a longtime collaborator of Kushner's (co-staging ``Angels in America'' before it went to Broadway) -- was brought in to restage the work. But a new production for regional theaters would be costly and logistically problematic because it involves a large children's chorus, a 10-member adult cast and a 13-piece orchestra. (In New Haven, 34 local youngsters ages 8 to 14 are involved with the two one-act operas.) So last summer Yale Repertory Theatre agreed to co-produced the show with Berkeley Rep. ``The show is one of the biggest productions we've ever done,'' says Victoria Nolan, managing director of Yale Rep. The cost of the productions at Berkeley and Yale Reps is $1.4 million. Yale's share is more than $600,000, twice what it usually spends for a show. Some special funding has been received for the production, and more is being sought. After the New Haven run, the co-production will be presented at the New Victory Theater in New York. Another challenge was the brevity of ``Brundibar,'' which runs about 35 minutes. To make it a fuller evening, it has been paired with ``Comedy on the Bridge,'' a one-act opera written by Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu, a non-Jewish contemporary of Krasa who fled Hitler's invasion. Kushner also adapted this opera, based on the libretto by Vaclav Kliment Klicpera. Like ``Brundibar,'' ``Comedy on theBridge'' is an allegory written in the '30s. The absurdist story centers on five people involved in infidelities who are trapped on a bridge between warring armies. The New Haven production of the two fables features second-year acting student Joe Gallagher as Brundibar. Also featured are Martin Vidnovic, William Youmans, Matt Farnsworth, Geoff Hoyle, Anjali Bhimani, Henry DiGiovanni, Aaron Simon Gross, Devynn Pedell and Angelina Reaux. The production also features musicians from the Yale School of Music, the first time in recent memory that the schools of Drama and Music have collaborated, says Nolan. There have been changes since the show opened in November in Berkeley, among them having children portray the armies in ``Comedy on the Bridge'' and making ``the Sendakian universe,'' in Taccone's words, more evident from the beginning of the show.

Terms like ``Sendakian'' make Sendak cringe. But Kushner can give his interpretation of Sendak's sensibility. While respecting the special time of childhood, says Kushner, ``Maurice recognizes that the job of childhood is to move on to what comes after that. That's why `Where the Wild Things Are,' `Charlotte's Web,' `Wind and the Willows' and `The Wizard of Oz' are so great. They say: Don't be a kid forever and to recognize that childhood is just one part of life. The point of writing a children's book is not to convince children they're children. They don't know things, so the point is to share what you know as an adult [with them].'' Kushner says much of children's literature ``fetishizes'' childhood and encourages children to ``hold on to it forever, which is a very bad idea.'' Kushner says his challenge was to adapt his writing to Sendak's visual and thematic style. ``So there's a certain alliterativeness, a certain amount of screwy compound adjectives, some little weird digressions and diversions that move in and out, but also a kind of seriousness about the narration that leavens any tendency one might have to get kind of cutesy. Maurice understands that children don't want to be served up a big plate of Marshmallow Fluff. ``On one level, `Brundibar' is a very simple and accessible story, but on another level it does have a complicated life like the best fairy tales do.''

When Taccone addressed the Yale School of Drama at the beginning of rehearsals in New Haven last month, he described Sendak's work as a combination of understanding that ``the world is fragile and filled with terrible suffering'' and ``that it is only through imagination that one can truly find a way to sustain oneself through very hard times.'' It's a message that Ela Weisberger understands all too well. As a child in the Terezin camp, she played the cat during the original presentations in 1943. ``It's my duty to talk about `Brundibar,''' says Weisberger, 75, who lives in Tappan, N.Y. She says the music of ``Brundibar'' provided ``food for the soul'' for the people in the camp. ``When we were singing on stage, we forgot where we were. We forgot the hunger and the troubles. But we were singing about our mothers and fathers and our homeland when we didn't have parents and a homeland.'' Because it was a ``model camp,'' Terezin prisoners at the time were allowed 50 kilograms of belongings, and many of them brought their musical instruments into the camp. One man, she says, cut up his cello and reassembled it when he arrived in Terezin. Weisberger spoke lovingly of the inmates who were her teachers and the way they kept the children's hopes alive as they surrounded them with music, art and dance.'' She says that after the last performance of ``Brundibar'' in the camp, many of the children who were in the show were sent to their deaths. ``For a long time we had in our minds that `Brundibar' died with the children. But now -- with Maurice and Tony and all the opera houses who do the show -- it will never die.''

What Weisberger and others will see in New Haven when the show opens Thursday is an adaptation of the work they performed -- with some small additions and an ending that was not part of the original. In the version performed in Terezin, the children's religion was not indicated. However, Sendak has drawn Stars of David sewn on the sleeves of many of the village children, just as children had to be identified as Jewish during the war. However, at the end of the story, Sendak reveals the two lead children as Christian, by simply placing a crucifix in the children's home when they return. There is no reference to Nazis, the Holocaust or concentration camps in the show, and children watching will see a charming tale. More knowledgable adults, however, may see much more in the blackbirds hovering in the sky. At the end of the opera, Sendak and Kushner wanted the character of the ominous Brundibar to return, a change from the original, to remind audiences that evil has a way of coming back. (In Sendak's book, the villain announces his return via a note written on an invitation to the ``Brundibar'' performance at Terezin.) ``It reminds people that the problems of the world do not go away in one magical moment,'' says Kushner. ``No one really lives happily ever after. We wanted to show that this was a lesson that has to be learned over and over again. The most important story in `Brundibar' is one that people never learn: that if people come together in solidarity and join forces to fight tyranny before it is really settled in, it can be prevented.'' ``We've had too many Brundibars over the years,'' sighs Sendak. ``He should take a break and go on a long vacation.''